"quito" is a song about how you are fucked up and pledge to do good. (anyone who has been fucked up and has pledged to do good will understand--this is darnielle's idiosyncratic universality.) we shall all be healed is--it's in the title!--both a promise and a hope. and like vows, like marriage, like AA, it's prone to be absolutely full of its own overblown shit. to imagine a chorus of children dancing around you as you stagger from the tomb is, it strikes me, at once the most romantic, redemptive, and self-indulgent fantasy you could have--the kind of thing that only actually occurs to you while completely drunk. sober people don't dream of a god who rains like hail, who stops everything to reckon. of course, after that, the narrator talks about raising the dead--and the swirling mess of wet organs and violin actually does it, the raising, all way off in the corner. our frail cages!
addendum 5/16/07:
in what will probably be the absolute crowning irony of this entire project, i wrote this entry last night, quietly hammered and deeply in the mood to be JUSTIFIED by the big-U universe. darnielle almost always works me the hardest when i'm having "sensitive days," which i've realized, is just about all the time, which is part of the reason why his appeal is very difficult to explain to people.
it's like, the adult in me loves the rich poetic flourishes and christian imagery of "quito,"
but the kid in me just wants to puke up my heart as regularly as possible and gesture at redemption in the way that only irresponsible people can!
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3 comments:
Addiction, so much like being a South American dictator.
I still think this is his best [studio] album. Or maybe Tallahassee.
i've been splitting in two different directions lately: i either JUST want the searing horrorshow/drowning love missives of early darnielle, or wsabh, which is basically his CHRISTIAN period.
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